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Boulder's Ball Aerospace, NOAA primed for polar-orbiting satellite

Launch has been seven years in the planning

By Charlie Brennan

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/12/2017 08:13:35 AM MST

Updated:
11/12/2017 08:13:45 AM MST

The JPSS-1 satellite, built by Boulder's Ball Aerospace and seen here when it was powered on for the first time in 2015, is scheduled for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Tuesday morning. (Ball Aerospace / Courtesy Photo)

The first spacecraft in the nation's next generation of polar-orbiting satellites is set for launch in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and the mission has strong Boulder ties.

The Joint Polar Satellite System-1, or JPPS-1, was designed and built by Boulder's Ball Aerospace, and once it enters polar orbit, it will be known as NOAA-20, feeding National Weather Service models for Boulder's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The first in a series of four planned satellites in the nation's newest generation of polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite system, JPSS-1 had originally been slated for launch on Friday, but was rescheduled to take off on Tuesday to address a battery issue on the lift rocket's flight termination system.

Its launch, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II from Space Launch Complex-2W at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is set for 2:47 a.m. MST Tuesday. The mission is a joint effort between NOAA and NASA.

Ball also built one of the five instruments on the spacecraft, the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite.

Scott Asbury, program director at Ball Aerospace and formerly the JPSS-1 program manager, is among the roughly 10 Ball personnel who will be at the launch site, while about another 10 from Ball plan to be at the NASA satellite operations facility in Suitland, Md.

"It's always exciting to launch a satellite," Asbury said Friday. "This program started seven years ago. It's a complicated system that took a long time to design, build and test.

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"A lot of people worked on it. In excess of 300 people touched this hardware."

As described on the NOAA website, the JPSS initiative provides global observations that become the backbone of short- and long-term forecasts, helping weather watchers predict severe weather events, such as the series of damaging hurricanes that left Houston, Puerto Rico and other regions reeling in recent months.

Improved speed and accuracy in forecasting is seen as critical to better preparing emergency managers to make the decisions that boost the chances of protecting lives and property, such as ordering evacuations as many as five to seven days in advance.

The satellite program is also viewed by NASA as a means to gain critical insights into the dynamics of the entire Earth system, including its clouds, oceans, vegetation, ice and atmosphere.

According to NOAA, JPSS satellites will also play a central role in both detecting and monitoring environmental hazards including droughts, poor air quality, harmful coastal waters and forest fires, and will be able to do so on a continuous basis through 2038.

Ball has also touted the fact that data from the JPSS spacecraft can provide advantages to an array of end users, ranging from businesses needing to know safe routes for shipping, to farmers requiring moisture data for agriculture, to even giving military troops in the battlefield a competitive advantage.

JPSS polar satellites are designed to orbit the Earth from pole-to-pole, crossing the equator about 14 times daily, and provide full global coverage twice a day.

"The JPSS-1 bus is based on our Ball Configurable Platform 200, a proven, agile spacecraft, which has 50 years of on-orbit operations and is designed for cost effective, remote sensing applications," Ball Aerospace JPSS-1 Program Manager Alex Chernushin stated in a news release.

He said the JPSS-1 is the 12th spacecraft built on the same core architecture, including the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership spacecraft. Known as Suomi NPP, that satellite launched in October 2011.

NASA paid Ball about $400 million for building both the "bus" that supports the payload and its ozone mapping instrument.

According to NOAA, deployment of the JPSS-1 will give the United States the benefit of two sophisticated polar satellites in the same orbit, circling the globe only about 50 minutes apart.

Asbury said that because the goal is to "tuck" the new Ball satellite in right behind the already-orbiting Suomi-NPP, Tuesday's launch window is only about 1 minute. If a factor such as high-altitude winds forces a delay, then Wednesday morning at about the same time will be the fallback time to attempt a launch.

"The forecast looks pretty good," he said. "I'm pretty confident it will get off."

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